Exploring Medicine Information Needs of Hypertensive Patients Using Short Message Service

Aims: To explore the pattern of unmet medicine information needs of hypertensive patients on long term therapy and their attitude to use of SMS (mobile phone short message service) for medicine information exchange with hospital pharmacists.
Sample: 117 hypertensive patients on long term therapy who had been accessing care for at least one year.
Study Design: An exploratory medicine information exchange programme followed by a cross-sectional survey.
Place and Duration of Study: Outpatient Clinic of Department of Cardiology at Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospitals Complex, Ile-Ife, Nigeria between October, 2010 and May, 2011.
Methods: Patients were prompted with SMS twice weekly for 5-8 months for use of their medication with advice to send their medicine information needs to the hospital pharmacist. Received messages were subjected to content analysis to identify their themes. A semi-structured questionnaire was used to explore patient attitude to the use of SMS. The 17-item questionnaire was designed on a 5-point Likert scale for responses with weights of 0-4. Data obtained were analysed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. These include frequencies and mean of weighted averages (MWA); tests of relationships, associations and of differences in means.
Results: A total of 63 SMS texts were received from the respondents and 44% of the messages expressed medicine information needs. Majority of the enquiries were related to indications and adverse effects. The patients’ attitude to the use of SMS for medicine information exchange with pharmacists was generally positive (MWA=3.13) with no significant demographic effects. Some (46%) of the patients called for institutionalisation of the medicine information exchange programme.
Conclusion: The unmet medicine information needs of chronic hypertensive patients in the study were related mainly to indications and side effects of prescribed and non-prescribed medications and the patients clamoured for use of SMS in redressing the anomaly.